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At least 11 dead in India bombings

Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 00:00

A victim who was injured during a bomb blast is carried on a wheelchair at a hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad tonight. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Two bombs exploded in a crowded shopping area in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad this evening, killing at least 11 people and wounding 50 more.

It was the worst bombing in the country in more than a year, officials said.

The blasts occurred about two minutes apart at around 7pm outside a cinema and a bus station, police said. Storefronts were shattered, motorcycles covered in debris, and food and plates from a roadside restaurant were scattered on the ground near a tangle of dead bodies. Passers-by rushed the bleeding and wounded out of the area.

“This is a dastardly attack, the guilty will not go unpunished,” prime minister Manmohan Singh said. He appealed to the public to remain calm.

The bombs were attached to two bicycles about 150 metres (150 yards) apart in Dilsukh Nagar district, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said. The district is a usually crowded shopping area near a residential neighbourhood.

Eight people died in one explosion and three in the other, Mr Shinde told reporters in the Indian capital of New Delhi.

Mahesh Kumar, a 21-year-old student, was heading home from a tutoring class when a bomb went off.

“I heard a huge sound and something hit me, I fell down, and somebody brought me to the hospital,” said Mr Kumar, who suffered shrapnel wounds.

Hyderabad, a city of 10 million, is a hub of India’s information technology industry and has a mixed population of Muslims and Hindus.

The explosions were the first major bomb attack to hit India since a September 2011 blast outside the High Court in New Delhi killed 13 people. The government has been heavily criticised for its failure to arrest the masterminds behind previous bombings.

Home secretary RK Singh said officials from the National Investigation Agency and commandos of the National Security Guards were leaving New Delhi for Hyderabad.

Rana Banerji, a former security official, said India remains vulnerable to such attacks because there is poor co-ordination between the national government and the states.

India has been in a state of alert since Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri, was hanged in a New Delhi jail nearly two weeks ago. Guru had been convicted of involvement in a 2001 attack on India’s Parliament that killed 14 people, including five gunmen.

Many in Indian-ruled Kashmir believe Guru did not receive a fair trial.